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Sunday Roast: Another year gone; what have we learned?

I know I’ve posted this video a few times over the years, in one form or another, but I’m posting it again.

Why? That’s a good question. I’m glad you asked.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m feeling especially pessimistic or cynical these days, but I’m thinking that we haven’t learned anything over the past year. Maybe it’s just that the United States is absolutely fucking bonkers right now, and I’m having trouble seeing the good in the world; or maybe we’re at a critical turning point, and, much like correcting a naughty child, the behavior gets much worse before it starts getting better.

I hope it’s both, and I hope the “getting better” part starts happening soon.

Speaking of ” feeling especially pessimistic or cynical these days” — here’s some stuff I wrote way back in 2002, stuff I just recently ran across while reviewing piles of old docs buried in stacks of old archived files. Seems the notion “that we haven’t learned anything over the past year”, can be expanded to thirteen years (at LEAST)!

[10-11-2002]
[Current events reflect] an historical reality that all but a few of ‘our’ “leaders” are either too blind to ‘see’, or maybe too dense to understand. Every nation since the beginning of human civilization that has succeeded and prospered has always, without fail, suddenly awakened to find itself being consumed by its own big mouth, as if in desperate attempt to stave off its own intellectual starvation. Does the current version of presumed ‘success’ — the USofA — offer a harbinger of a ‘new’ reality? Probably not.

[10-13-2002]
A founder and leader of the greatest democracy the world had/has ever known – once proudly spoke:

We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet, we are always ready to face any danger…. We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting wisely…. We have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity.

Those words were spoken by Pericles in his “Funeral Oration” (as recorded by Thucydides) in 430 BCE, one year after diplomatic failures saw to the initiation of the Peloponnesian War, one year before Pericles died, and 26 years before the Golden Age of Athens came to a close as men of Sparta sacked the Acropolis.

[10-18-2002]
Horatio Smith wrote: “Patriotism [is] too often the hatred of other countries disguised as the love of our own.” America may well see herself as a generous nation, anxious to share the love of herself with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, what the rest of the world sees these days is Arrogance. For those on this side of the world who care to take the time to look around, the same conclusion is not only available, but inevitable. The handwriting is on the wall, and the good deeds from our past cannot carry us forever.

I am, today, ashamed of my country because of her misplaced and misguided arrogance. I also fear for my country because she seems to have become so completely unwilling to re-sheath her sword and return to the table. . . .

Is there any of that that’s not as current today as it was then? Has anything changed other than maybe a name or two or three? How much further down the slope of the ever-present abyss of national collapse have we managed to go? Are we more than, say, one “Trump card” away from losing the game entirely?

Reliable Sources’ Top 10 Media Stories of 2015 has Trump at the number one spot, but neglected to mention he was chosen ‘Liar of the Year’ by Politifact, because he told so many whoppers they couldn’t single one out as the ‘Lie of the Year’.

Oddly, the ‘Brian Williams lied’ story was number two. I doubt if it would have been mentioned if he worked for CNN. It was also called ‘Journalism’s Black Eye’ for 2015, earlier in the show.